Case Study 09 — Travel & Tourism
Travel Advisor Booking Platform
Helped a travel tech company understand what they actually needed to build — and what it would realistically cost — before committing capital to a development programme.
The Challenge
An Africa-focused travel technology company had a solid idea for a booking platform serving travel advisors and operators. The idea was sound. But 'let's build a travel platform' covers an enormous amount of ground, and without a defined scope, investment decisions are guesswork and delivery programmes become moving targets. Generic e-commerce booking assumptions didn't apply here — the nuances of African travel, advisor commission models, and variable operator inventory made this a different problem entirely.
The Approach
- 01Ran workshops with working travel advisors to understand how they actually operated — not what a platform designer imagines, but what really happens between a client call and a confirmed booking
- 02Mapped the supply side too: what tour operators and accommodation providers needed to participate effectively
- 03Drew a clear line between Phase 1 and Phase 2 — because platforms that try to do everything on day one do nothing well
- 04Translated features into effort, effort into cost, and cost into a number a CFO could actually evaluate
What Was Defined
- Advisor portal: inventory search, itinerary building, quote generation, booking workflow, client management, and commission tracking — the complete advisor workflow, sequenced and scoped
- Operator portal: inventory management, pricing, booking management, and performance reporting — what the supply side needed to make the demand side work
- Platform infrastructure: availability-aware search, multi-currency payments, and a commission engine that could handle the complexity of African travel pricing
- Phase 2 roadmap documented — so what was deferred was deferred by deliberate choice, not forgotten
Outcomes
- A scope document the investment committee could interrogate — structured, detailed, and honest about tradeoffs
- Feature-level effort and cost estimates that gave the business a basis for vendor selection and budget negotiation
- Key technical risks surfaced before contracts were signed — payment processing and inventory integration flagged as early priorities
- A shared baseline that prevented the scope from becoming whatever anyone wanted it to be once build started
Key Takeaway
The value of scoping isn't the document — it's the decisions it forces. When you define scope properly, you find out what you won't cut, what you can defer, and what you didn't know you'd need. That clarity is worth more than the first sprint.
Customer name withheld by agreement.
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